Thursday, December 20, 2007

Much has changed. So I will start with a summary of the recent months.

Things have been going quite well in Chaosstorm, my Corporation. After getting up our POS and maintaining a 5.0+ standing with the Minmatar Republic. Hi-sec research corporations such as mine endeavor to maintain a 5.0+ corporate standing with specific factions in order to emplace research dedicated POSs in 0.5+ empire systems. This allows the stations to be fairly immune to incidental attacks, since it now takes an alliance/corp that can field 15+ BS many many hours to reduce the POS. Even a small one. The result is that these hi-sec POSs are very safe places. Especially so when the people using them have the skills necessary for remote research. This the researchers to place the BPOs in a in system station and as such are protected from any losses. Only a limited part of any BPO collection is in research at any one time and if there is a war dec, they can all be stoped and the BPOs are then safe in the NPC station.

The interesting result of this has been the acquisition of two new pilots. Both have commited to getting their standings with Minmatar above 5.0. Both are currently lagging due to lack of online time but since the corp average is at 4.91 we remain withing striking distance and should a push be needed, should be attainable withing short order.

While the research on my collection of BPOs is progressing and my skills are improving (I now have advanced lab op 4 and am able to research 10 lines at once), LCSC has settled into a nice development mode. No major changes planned in the short term.

Then two curve balls came:

1) there was an aborted alliance move into the Derilik/Curse. This was abortive in that the move was originally mandatory but eventually became optional for the industrial corporations. So I spent a week rationalizing my possessions and moving most of my main operation to Maspah in Derilik... Only to find out why the move was optional the next weekend:

2) The PvP centric corporations decided to leave the alliance... And since the senior alliance leadership was mostly concentrated in the two corporations that left, this was a heavy blow to AMC. As part and parcel of this move, I was offered control of AMC along with sueAGPlant. When sue dodged the position with Neo-like moves, I ended up in control of AMC.

Yep 9 months into the game I'm now in control of an alliance... Someone shoot me please.

My next blog will detail the trials and tribulations of taking over leadership of an alliance when over half it's pilots leave....

Wednesday, August 15, 2007

Hi all, been a while since I've blogged. The main reason for that is that as I got further into the world of EvE, I've come to realize how dependent the corporation world is on intelligence. As in spy stuff. And till I got a better handle on what could and couldn't be used against one in EvE, I didn't want to give anything away that could be used as intel against us.

So I'm going to be getting back to blogging about the EvE world. But this time with slightly more generic commentary on my experiences, hopefully leaving out operational details.

Thursday, May 31, 2007

Started off by getting my retriever killed stupidly by semi-afk mining (wasn't checking often enough and got once moondog got out of teon and actually started exploring out to obro). So the S.O.S. corp has wizened up and started tracking us down properly. Annoying because it will slow down my mining op. But go in that it was getting disappointing that they were so avoidable.

One thing I did notice is that the day time crew is much less vocal about tracking down [505]'s locations. This is problematic. When Cerui is Q and Arancia and some others are on we can reliably track the enemy without engaging them thus allowing the rest of the alliance to know where they are and what's going on. This has the added advantage of keeping their attention focused on the scouts instead of tracking us down.

From what I noticed the day time crowd isn't as good at this aspect. At one point when I asked if anyone was tracking the enemy's location, no one answered in the war channel. I'm getting the impression that this needs to change.

Other things that happend:

- My contract worked out and I got 23 mil - this went a long way towards putting me back on my feet.- I decided to support the hunting op that went down tonight.- There was a period of network instability that seriously cut down on the [505]'s presence.- Moondog started out tracking me down in Obro for another easy kill but since I was in my desty instead of a barge, I was able to avoid him. Then Q and Cerui decided to join the mix as we tried to track him down. A belt and safe spot ridden cat and mouse game ensued as we tried to track him down. Eventually he called in some help and they retreated to the Teon system. With further reinforcements we were eventually able to engage in a long stationary battle. This was a half hour plus long battle. I had two ships shot out from under me. In both cases where I lost a ship I managed to warp away after being switched to, but then went to re-join the fight to keep the pressure on. Unfortunately with a damaged ship, the next time they switched to me they nailed me right properly. Mind you since both times I was trying to warp away, getting my pod out was simple. We didn't get through their tanks and Q made a mistake and lost his ship. My two ships weren't much of a loss 1.6mil isk nominally only. I lost two relatively inexpensive ships and didn't lose my 3rd ship (although I had to go all the way back to Dum to get the belli). The reason I didn't lose that las ship is because I had it setup as shield tanking PvE ship. The end result was that although I wasn't killing them a lot, I wasn't getting killed. I also was able to warp out when they got serious on me because I was in an arty rig.

Lessons learned from this fight:

Once a frigate is damaged into armor get another ship.

I need to have more frigates/destroyers in the Teon system so that when I do inevitably loose one I can go grab another right away.

I need to be fleeter on my feet. There is no reason not to run like a bunny once you start taking damage from a battleship.

I need to see about a slightly better fit for my Rifters.

I think I need to build more rifters as well.

I need to try the destroyer with the AB, I think it'll be a better ship for my purposes.

Once all this was done, I picked up Focus and 2 retrievers and 4 strip miners (ouch). I'm going to move one to Tidacha so I can mine Nox in that area and one to Dum for the Dum/Obro mining operations. Also I need to move one of my ratter desties to that ammo dump deeper in Derelik so I'll be able to zip arround in a shuttle/frigate effectively.

Tuesday, May 29, 2007

I managed to get 2 more cans of scordite in and that was sufficient for the last cruise missile run. In the morning I ran it to the customer's system and dropped it off. As far as the rest of the war goes, man do we need to start pulling together. We're still operating as a bunch of independent people withing independent corps instead of cohesively. Man do we need to work on that.

Monday, May 28, 2007

First I did a lot of mining in order to try and accomplish two objectives:

Fill out an order that Carbon Freezer setup.

Build my Cyclone.

Carbon Freezer left the corp. I get the impression he didn't want to have to deal with a war. Personally I don't think this is sufficient reason to leave a corp but what ever floats his boat. So I started the day by mining madly. I managed to get 3 of the missile batches done. Now I just need the 4th. It unfortunatly is going to be a bear Pyerite wise. Oh well mining during this war does not look like it's going to present much of a problem.

At 15:55 the war started.

Some observations about the war with Save Our Souls.

They definitely seem to be a bunch of prime griefers, especially after some comments made to Cerui.

There seems to be a vast gulf between various PvP elements in our alliance. There are the calm and collected ones like Cerui and the tension raising ones like Talwin.

I'm getting the impression that the other corp is more cohesive than we are, they are also full of tech 2 pilots with spiffy ships.

Their recon seems to be inferior to ours. Not so much in terms of capabilities but of putting in the work to sniff out targets.

Based on the ships they can fly and the ships we can fly, I'm going to assume that our alliance has many more newbie/mid range pilots than they do. So we're just not going to be able to go head to head with them. This means we are going to have to operate in a much more tactical manner than they will and only give battle when we can surprise the enemy. This will be tricky unless they really drop the intel ball.

I predict lots of cat and mouse operations with feints and counter feints, ambush and counter ambush as we try to survive this war and frustrate the enemy. According to Cerui they have set some vague objective of getting x isk in loot from us or some such. I suspect if all our pilots fly smart and don't do stupid things we might be able to operate effectively (the odds of them all flying smart are low but you never know).

Sunday, May 27, 2007

Things are getting active! First AMC gets war decked. Then Carbon Freezer decides to leave BIAR because of that (and no way back in afterwards). Then he arranges a contract for some cruise missiles (F.O.F.) for delivery by next weekend.

I've now got the BPO's to those cruise missiles. But of course they take obscene amounts of minerals. oh well 4 x 25k missiles isn't bad. I"ll get 23mil out of it.

Of course this puts a little crimp in my plans to get enough minerals for my cyclone. Which also needs ridiculous amounts of minerals.

Friday, May 25, 2007

Well the 4 destroyers were ready, so I moved them to Teon for sale. I also bought all the missing jury rigging skills, so I'll at least be able to use any rig I make. Associated with this is a move to start buying all the rest of the tech 1 rig BPO's. I'll need to do some extensive traveling for that. Incidentally my new load out for the destroyer has a VERY effective passive tank. Very nice.

During this there was definitely some server problems. it went down for a good chunk of the night.

I also had a bit of a talk with Arancia with regards to the 2 hulls in Teon alliance thing. I indicated that those of us who mine may want the ability to pull in our ore before responding to a rally cry. We also discussed that we need to establish who in the alliance can be a squadron/wing/fleet commander because of the time that was spent last time getting that organized. For rapid fleet formation everyone needs to know who's capable of holding what type of position and what type of ships they normally fly so there is much less time lost forming cohesive fleets. Also we need to get proper skills up for fleet command and wing command so we are not limited to a single 1 wing fleet.

Thursday, May 24, 2007

Well I finally got the skills for a battle cruiser a few nights ago. Although this does push the bar on what I eventually want a BPO for, for the immediate future I NEED a BC to run some of those missions. And after looking at the mineral requirements I realized that it would be cheaper to simply buy a BPC for 400k and build it with minerals I mined myself. Especially since the BPC I bought was a ME30 BPC. So I will be able to simply build it once I get some mining done and buy some Megacyte. Lucky like most Minmatar designs it does not require Noxium. So there will be no necessary trip down to Tidacha for this build. Just a lot of local mining. I should be able to get it built in about 3 cans or so of minerals which is peanuts in the grand scheme of things.

Once I do that I'll relegate my Bellicose to Teon to become part of my Alliance ready reserve. Which reminds me we really should add a subject to the forums where individual pilots list their various alliance ready ships in Teon. That way the leaders can get a good idea what they have available to them when they call an alliance emergency Op.

Monday, May 21, 2007

Ok, I finally got some progress on the ship hull front. I'm finally up to Battlecruiser and Rupture ship skill wise. I've also attended the CEO conference and talked about various points of discussion.

The communication division is up and running

Apogee has not left the game but will continue to be AWOL. Queb is still in charge of things till Apogee gets back.

We need to work on fleet movements

All members of all corp need to setup 2 combat ready hulls in Teon ready to go

We need to practice readyness ops.

We need to get alliance ops underway to help towards the main objective with each corp organizing at least 1 alliance op per month

Talwin realy doesn't like our impending logo. He has some deep routed objection to the 3 elements that need to be present.

The rest of the alliance is now aware of the BIAR's situation with regards to an absentee CEO who doesn't want to do the CEO type job.

My personal plans have also matured a bit for the short term:

Get all existing skills to level 2 minimum.

Get some jury rigging skills.

Work on combat skills now that I've got the hull skills that'll last me a while

Once combat skills are higher, work on production skills for mining and refining

Sneak some leadership skills in there somehow

Get into invention (slowly aquire the skills along the way)

Get skills necessary for interceptors

On the non-skill front

Get 2 combat hulls ready to go in teon

Get a 2nd barge in Tidacha and move the existing transport back to dum/teon for sale

Friday, May 18, 2007

Well, after re-mod'ing the stabber to be an arty boat, I must say that I'm severely disappointed i this cruiser. I just doesn't have enough mid slots to have an effective tank. It's probably fine for PvP where things are much more cut and thrust, but for PvE, one needs to have an effective tank, and this ship just fails. Therefore I'm working on getting Cruiser III so that I may setup a rupture. We'll see how it goes.

Wednesday, May 16, 2007

And I did it. Finally got Minmatar Industrial IV. I picked up the BPO to the Mammoth and cooked one up. And indeed the mammoth is going to be a great mining hauler. I still don't have the skills necessary to take it to the max but I can now hold half a can per trip. So this will cut down the time necessary for hauling in the ores. also because I am able to fit a tractor beam as well as a salvager I'll be able to speed up the rate at which I clean up wrecks near the cans. Not to mention tractoring a can will be much faster than flying to it.

I also put 4 destroyers up for sale in teon. I'm going to need to mine oodles of scordite soon. That seems to be the biggest limiting factor regarding my production. Keeping the pyerite stocks up seems to be my biggest problem. Noxium is simply a matter of heading down to Tidacha for a few cans of pyroxeres. The quantities of that that I need aren't excessive, Megacyte and Zydrine are readily available at competitive prices in Rens. As far as haulers go, I think I'm going to eventually make 3 Mammoths, 2 of the type that can haule 13750 m3 minimum each, 1 of a "survive an ambush" type with serious tank and warp core stabilizers.

I'm also going to want to work on establishing local haulage routes and some inter-region high sec NPC haulage routes. Also working on getting Battle Cruisers up and runnining so I can do levle 3 missions would be nice. That way I can do the final push to get Standing 8 with Eifyr & co. Also working with Minmatar corps in general will need to be done so I can get the standing necessary to establish my own POS corp in high sec.

Monday, May 14, 2007

Well after getting back from Toronto I just went on long enough to switch the skill I'm currently learning from Electronics V to Minmatar Industrial IV. sometime on tuesday I should be able to use a Mammoths. My plans for the near future include doing some more noxium mining then getting back to Dumkirinur and buying a Mammoth blueprint along the way.